The Further Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes [Paperback]

David E. H. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2000

One of the longest-running jokes on the scientific scene, the "Daedalus" column began in New Scientist in the mid-1960s and transferred to Nature in the 1980s. Each week it offers a new scheme to challenge accepted notions of scientific principles, schemes that are neither feasible nor completely absurd. Always entertaining, the Daedalus schemes often have a serious purpose and raise crucial questions about science (sample title: "A Womb with a View, or At Least a Phone").

This delightful book compiles roughly one hundred of David Jones's popular columns, each of which exhibits a keen and approachable mixture of entertaining and thought-provoking material. Like the collection of articles that came before it, this work will appeal to a broad audience of the scientifically curious.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Jones, who has turned out the weekly "Daedalus" column in British publications since 1964, sees himself as "the court jester in the Palace of Science." Each of his columns proposes some scientific scheme designed to confront accepted notions of technical feasibility. Appearing in New Scientist from 1964 to 1988, in Nature and the Guardian until 1996, and in Nature alone since then, the columns now number more than 1,700. From them, Jones has chosen 101, revised them, added comments, and drawn pictures or diagrams to accompany most of them. He says the columns aim at "a region of scientific humour whose appeal lay in its closeness to reality." And so he goes on about such topics as the solid-liquid diet, a dance to the music of space-time, and herbal petrol. The columns will evoke plenty of chuckles from the reader while dispensing plenty of sound scientific information.

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Review

'In each article, following a time-hallowed formula, he takes some scientific quirk and fashions from it an invention which, although delightfully cuckoo, leaves th reader with the nagging feeling that it might just work...I think this book should be compulsory reading for research directors. They would certainly get their money's worth, for no fewer than 148 inventions are described. But on no account should they, or you, attempt to read them at one sitting. To do so would run the grave risk of boggle overload.' s

`'...this book should be compulsory reading for research directors.'' Chemistry in Britain

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198504691
• ISBN-13: 978-0198504696
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,384,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science doesn't get more entertaining than this, July 24, 2000

By 

Mike Christie (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Further Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Paperback)

Under the pseudonym of Daedalus, David Jones has been writing for Nature and New Scientist for thirty-odd years; this is the second collection. The hundred short essays here are a hard-to-describe cross between humour and serious scientific speculation. The humour is actually in the science itself, which sounds hard to believe until you read it.

For example, Daedalus comes up with a scheme to generate electricity from the Rockies, not by hydro-electricity, which lets the descent of water generate power, but by the descent of the mountains themselves. After all, he points out, there is an enormous amount of energy locked up in all that high-altitude rock. His scheme for "geo-electric power" solves far more of the difficulties in this plan than you might think, though (in this case) not all of them. The plausibility is itself the joke--it's not so much that the scientific reader likes trying to spot the error, though that *is* fun to try to do; Daedalus just presents these outrageous ideas completely deadpan, and with a great deal of supporting evidence.

In fact, there is no flaw at all in many of his schemes. A column of his, collected in the earlier "Inventions of Daedalus", is actually cited by the inventors of buckminsterfullerene as an early paper talking about the possibilities for hollow carbon molecules, and several other articles have been either prescient or have turned out to track current research. But the book is not just for scientists and engineers--anyone with a lay interest in science will love it.

I recommend leaving it in the bathroom; each essay is a couple of pages--just right. It'll keep you entertained for months.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imagination soaring in scientific blue skies, July 11, 2000

By 

Julian P Killingley - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Further Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Paperback)

What a delight it is to find that David Jones has compiled another compendium of the plausible schemes of Daedalus. Anyone with the slightest interest in science will find hours of pleasure randomly dipping into this collection of Daedalus's musings culled from New Scientist, The Guardian and Nature over the last 30 years.

The breadth of David Jones's learning is astonishing - no scientific discipline is immune from the attentions of Daedalus and his team of DREADCO scientists. Reading this book constantly left me veering between wondering whether Daedalus really was revealing a glimpse of future technology and hugging myself with glee and shaking with laughter at some of the possible consequences foretold.

Jones reminds us that Daedalus is not to be mocked unthinkingly - his prediction of the existence of Buckminsterfullerene is a debt acknowledged by the Nobel laureates themselves. In this book you can read more about Daedalus's predictions of carbon nanotubes and their desirable properties.

The book follows a format where, typically, a plausible scheme is sketched out. Jones then provides us with an extract from Daedalus's notebook that gives the back-of-a-beermat calculations on which the scheme is based. He concludes with a Daedalus retrospective comment on the scheme.

Daedalus clearly has a life of his own and his schemes attract serious scientific critique - indeed, we are told how assessment of the feasibility of proposed schemes has been built into at least one university course. He is happy to point out to us when he has fallen into serious error - as, for example, he did when proposing generation of Gigawatt scale electrical energy by piezoelectric effects in the earth's crust caused by tidal distortion.

The book holds far too many surprises to mention - indeed, to do so is to spoil the reader's pleasure. My personal favorite is his prediction of the potential fire hazard lurking in the depths of the ocean below 1500 meters. It's a really great read - and one you will return to again and again.

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking Intellect Meets Astounding Creativity, June 23, 2002

By 

Timothy Campbell (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Further Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Paperback)

This book features diverse tongue-in-cheek inventions, all of which were cooked up in the mind of the author. While the majority of the inventions are (and were intended to be) impracticable, each one sets the mind spinning in a deliciously enjoyable way.

Every section is only a couple of pages long, but this is not a book that one should race through. Each article contains ideas to be savoured.

If these were only off-the-cuff ideas, this book wouldn't be so impressive. What really makes the difference is that the author backs up his ideas with hard science. (People who are afraid of a few formulae in a book should probably look elsewhere.) This challenges the reader to figure out WHY a particular invention is not likely to reach the market!

I don't want to over-state the difficulty of the material -- you don't have to be a scientist. In fact, you can skip over the formulae without missing the point.

Each article features an appendix that did not appear when it was published in the original magazine. This helps us see the problems inherent in each invention. In a few cases, though, Jones's proposals have actually borne fruit! Apparently there is indeed much truth in jest.